Nick Finch, the Liberty County sheriff who was arrested and suspended
in June and accused of tampering with the arrest record of a man in
custody on a weapon-concealment charge, was found not guilty by a
six-person jury in Bristol.

Gov. Rick Scott, who had signed the arrest warrant for Finch and
named his interim replacement, immediately announced that Finch would be
returned to office. “Sheriff Nick Finch will be reinstated
immediately,” Scott announced. “I would like to thank the members of the
jury in Liberty County for their service in this trial. I would also
like to thank Interim Sheriff Buddy Money for his service to the state
of Florida.”

Finch was arrested after an incident in March in which one of his
deputies arrested a man for carrying a concealed weapon during a traffic
pullover. After the man’s mug shot was taken, Finch arrived at the jail
with one of the man’s relatives, told his deputies to stop the
procedures, released the suspect, and then allegedly walked away with
the records that had already been generated. He told investigators he
let the man go because he was protecting his Second Amendment rights,
but he was charged with official misconduct for allegedly destroying the
records.

The case attracted the interest of the Constitutional Sheriffs and
Peace Officers Association, the organization run by longtime Patriot
movement figure Richard Mack,
who made Finch’s arrest a fundraising issue. Mack organized a
legal-defense fund for the sheriff and warned his followers: “If Sheriff
Finch is found guilty in this case, the most unjustified and frivolous
trial in history, then we are all in trouble and could be suspects in
any incident!”

Similarly, the conspiracy-minded Oath Keepers adopted Finch’s cause and organized fundraisers for his legal defense as well. The John Birch Society’s newsmagazine warned readers
that “Freedom of speech, federalism, the right to keep and bear arms,
and the right of the people to govern themselves through free elections
are under assault in Florida.”

Much of the trial in Bristol centered around whether Finch had
actually broken the law by whiting out the suspect’s name from the
booking records. Finch claimed that the arrest records state officials
alleged he walked away with never existed – and no one was able to prove
otherwise.

Finch, meanwhile, acknowledged that he was practicing a kind of
nullification of state law when he ordered the man’s release. He told the jury
that he did not believe in enforcing the state’s concealment statutes,
because he believed that Second Amendment rights trumped those laws.

The state prosecutor, Jack Campbell, questioned Finch on that point:
“Don’t you agree that the Second Amendment doesn’t give you the power to
pick and choose which laws you’re going to enforce and which laws
you’re going to not enforce?”

Finch answered: “The Second Amendment is very specific to keeping and
bearing arms, Mr. Campbell. You’re talking about many laws. What I
believe is the Second Amendment requires me to make a decision based on
that Second Amendment as to whether I’m going to go forward with the
state charges. Yes, I think the Constitution has to mean something at
some point, Mr. Campbell.”

There was no immediate response from Mack or his organization. A
spokesman for an Oath Keepers unit in Florida posted on the
organization’s blog: “This is a great day for Liberty and Freedom. This
is a perfect example for the rest of the Sheriff’s [sic] in the state of
Florida and in the United States that the Constitution still has
authority in this country not the feds or any other state agency that
thinks they can take our Sheriffs [sic] authority away.”

Sara Robinson has worked as an editor or columnist for several national magazines, on beats as varied as sports, travel, and the Olympics; and has contributed to over 80 computer games for EA, Lucasfilm, Disney, and many other companies. A native of California's High Sierra, she spent 20 years in Silicon Valley before moving to Vancouver, BC in 2004. She currently is pursuing an MS in Futures Studies at the University of Houston. You can reach her at srobinson@enginesofmischief.com.